


Bury Me Six Feet In Snow

by take-to-thesky (Kiwii_kid)



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Other, there's ryugoro if u squint, warning for goro typical nonsense, yeah p much endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 16:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17348474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiwii_kid/pseuds/take-to-thesky
Summary: He wouldn't exactly mind dying, but he wouldn't want to put more work on the hospital staff’s plates. Or the Thieves’. Or Niijima’s. Good God. He really fucked this up for everyone, didn't he?





	Bury Me Six Feet In Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Goro lives AU, aka im a self indulgent kinnie. this is unbetad, written at 3 am, and short as hell because i don't fear god. this was gonna be a ryugoro fic but i got lazy so i guess not lol. have fun reading this i guess :pensive:

Goro still doesn't know how he did it. He still doesn't understand how someone as broken, as gullible, as naive, as  _ worthless  _ as him managed to survive. But he did it. He clawed his way through shadow after shadow, burned through item after item, and he managed to pull himself out of that godforsaken engine room. He had chuckled to himself, tending to his bruised and broken body in the grimy ventilation shaft, knowing damn well that this Palace was going to be his tomb. He had no way out after his phone had shattered beyond repair, since the Nav was pretty much inaccessible. So he just crawled through a Palace he once felt safe in, now on high alert at every moment. Somewhere so familiar turned so hostile. He figures that’s always been the pattern for him, anyways. A fitting end for the bastard child of an even more bastardous man.

 

It seems everything in that Palace is a miracle. He’s miraculously still alive when he feels the ship start to sink. It makes sense, given the urgency of the Phantom Thieves’ mission. They would've returned as soon as possible to take Shido down. He's miraculously recovered, at least a little bit, in a safe room since they last left, so he rips through the palace as fast as he physically can, cursing every time the water licks at his heels. And he miraculously makes it out. He stands on the wall of the Diet building, which is now perpendicular to the sea, and looks out in front of him. 

 

On the water, the Thieves are in some sort of life boat. He sighs in relief, knowing they're alive and well takes a weight off of his shoulders. They've kicked Shido’s distorted ass and lived to tell the tale. He’s ready to resign himself to death by drowning, which he assumes isn't the worst way to die, until he actually takes a moment to count the number of people (and cognitive-something-or-others like Morgana) in the boat. One of them is missing. Desperate to figure out who didn't make it, and who he'll likely see in Hell, he climbs over the sinking ship to get a closer look. 

 

Halfway over, he gets knocked back straight into the water. 

 

Goro pulls himself up from the water, thanking whatever god might be out there that he knows how to swim, glancing around for what the hell just happened. He looks to his left, and Sakamoto is floating in the water like a ragdoll. Well,  _ fuck _ . Goro knows he's never been one to play the hero, but he started in that stupid engine room so he might as well keep the trend going. He grabs Sakamoto by the wrist, dragging them both back over to the debris of the ship. Goro haphazardly pulls the other boy onto a piece of the ship still above water, silently apologizing for his rough handling. He figures Sakamoto would still have a marginally functional phone, at the very least with an accessible Nav, so he digs through Sakamoto’s pockets. Better than dying in the Metaverse, he supposes. After finding the aforementioned phone, which was tucked into his fucking  _ belt _ of all places, Goro quickly gives Sakamoto his last Life Stone and gets them both the hell out of there. 

 

They end up in an alleyway behind the Diet building. Goro winces at the exhaustion of being in the real world again, glancing down at a semi-conscious Sakamoto. He sighed, quickly dragging Sakamoto to somewhere more comfortable before bolting to the nearest train station. He couldn't go to his apartment, Shido, nor could he get medical, once again Shido, nor could he go to the police, thanks to fucking  _ Shido _ . He wishes he could be in his own bed, but he knows Yongen-Jaya well enough and he knows that he could probably get away with hiding there, so he gets on the train in that direction.

 

He gets off the train, nearly collapsing now that he's more aware of his pain, and stumbles through the dark towards a shady clinic he's heard about. He knows the thieves trust it, so it's probably safe enough to go there. 

 

He makes it up the stairs before actually falling. He grunts in pain, mumbling an apology to the nice lady trying to get him up. He didn't mean to bleed on the nice white tile, he promises. She just tells him to shut up and get to the nearby exam room. He listens to her, nodding and shambling towards it. He crawls onto the bed as instructed, finally having a chance to assess the damage done from multiple explosions. Cognitive explosions, he learns, do just as much damage as real ones. Unfortunate. 

 

The lady from earlier, Takemi, comes inside the exam room, gritting her teeth. She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

 

“What, if I may ask, were you doing to get you in  _ this _ kind of state?” She asks, getting to work at checking his injuries. Goro isn't really thinking straight, so he just whimpers when her hands ghost over particularly bad injuries.

 

He manages to mumble a quiet “Phantom Thieves” in response, but she just rolls her eyes and starts to get to work tending to his wounds, starting with the searing pain that starts at his left temple and ends at his right eyebrow. It doesn't take long for him to pass out.

 

By the time he wakes up, it’s morning again. He moves to sit up, but groans in pain when he does. He supposes Takemi heard him, as she enters the room soon after. He glances up at her, guilt settling deep in his gut when he sees her hard expression. He's ready to pull himself out of the bed and bolt out the door when she pulls his fringe out of his eyes to check on the wound. She sighs, looking down at her clipboard.

 

“Honestly, you should be dead right now. How long were you bleeding to lose  _ that much _ blood?”

 

Goro paused. “What… day is it?”

 

“December 18th.”

 

“... 3 days.”

 

Takemi looked down at him in awe. Shaking her head, she made a few notes on the clipboard.

 

“You'll have to be transferred to a hospital near-”

 

Akechi sat up, wincing at the pain. He reached his hand out to stop her, his words coming out as barely more than a whisper.  “I can't. I cannot have a record of me going anywhere near there.”

 

She raised an eyebrow. “May I ask why? I don't have the resources to adequately help you here. You'll heal much quicker if you go to a hospital.”

 

“I've… made some shady deals, and I didn't deliver on my end. And if I go to that hospital, I will not get the chance to heal at all,” he managed to explain through the pain, gritting his teeth. He wouldn't exactly mind dying, but he wouldn't want to put more work on the hospital staff’s plates. Or the Thieves’. Or Niijima’s. Good God. He really fucked this up for everyone, didn't he?

 

Takemi shut her eyes for a moment, deep in thought. “Alright, fine. We won't transfer you to a hospital. But I'm going to call one of my own equally shady connections, and I'm going to get you into an actual bed rather than this cot. He lives in the area, so it'll be easy enough to move you over there.”

 

Goro visibly relaxed, sinking back into the cot. “Alright.”

 

She sighed, pulling out her phone. She turned to him, quickly saying, “If he agrees, I'll be heading over there nearly every day. So don't get too comfy.” Before turning back to her phone and calling her mystery connection.

 

He looked up at the ceiling, too unfocused to quite understand any of Takemi’s words. He shut his eyes, grinning to himself. Perhaps the Thieves were right. Perhaps there were reasonable adults. Perhaps there was a future out there. He wouldn't think too hard on that, though. For now, he figured he could just fall asleep to Takemi’s voice. He could figure everything out later. 


End file.
